Monday, September 8, 2008

Do You Know Your ABC's?

This post is a re-run of a July, 2007 post I did. I think these ABC's bear repeating. When I learned Gary's original ABC's (these are very close), I listened to them on tape every morning when I walked my dog. I did this for about two months until they became completely ingrained.

Susan Goodwill

BrigaDOOM

Little Shop of Murders

Susan's Editing ABC's(Homage to Gary Provost's ABC's)

A: Active verbs and active characters

B: Brief, cut, cut, cut KILL YOUR DARLINGS

C: Conflict in every scene (two beating hearts locked in battles large and small, that's conflict.)

O: Organize your scenes. You may not have written them in the best order for the cause and effect of your story.

P: Pace: Use more short sentences at high tension moments, and shorter scenes toward the books climax. Fast is slow and slow is fast. Accelerate and abbreviate the slow spots, slow and expand time on the action spots.

Q: Questions: Does your opener make the reader ask a story question? Do your chapter ends? What about at the end of each scene? Is every question answered by the end of the book? Are some questions about the series character left unanswered intentionally?

X: Exercises—do your writing exercises, find your characters through free-writes and prompts.Y: You and the reader write the story together. Writing less words will allow your reader to write with you inside her head.

Susan, thank you for posting these! I attended a few conferences back in the 80s that Gary spoke at. I know that he used to write romance novels under a pseudonym but I could never find out what it was. Even Barbara Delinsky didn't know what it was at that time. Does anyone here know?